Week 27, Challenger (M), Dublin, Ireland, £50000

christian · Intermediate Club Player

Week 27, Challenger (M), Dublin, Ireland, £50000

XCW4EVA · County player

mmmh, i hope mtf have dropped another bollock

Salmon · Tennis legend

Baker lost by 64 26 46.

Skupski lost by 36 63 67(3).

steven · Tennis legend

Yup, it's Kalaitzis or bust in singles (not something I ever thought I'd have occasion to say) and it's only Tuesday - he's playing in Bals, sounds like a good epithet for this week really!

Shhh · Challenger level

Its wrong to judge Jamie too harshly as we dont actually know for sure what happened there but, on the face of it, its a shocker. He played doubles yesterday so even had a warm up on the courts.

With all the flack flying lately, Jamie has been referred to as one of the more hard working Brits, and I dont doubt it. Yet consistency has also been talked about and after the big effort at Wimbledon, to pick up a score like this must drive the coaches mad. They've got a point too!

I know somebody e-mails Jamie occassionally, any chance of getting his side of the story? It'd be a relief to find out there was a genuine reason for the scoreline as opposed to just a poor match.

XCW4EVA · County player

Well thats pretty disappointing, we needed a strong performance from some men this week in retaliation to the stick they have been getting. Terrible result, specially for jamie!!!

Vonce · Club Coach

Yeah, terrible week for the Brits here. Especially Jamie's ofc :sad:

Still for me I'm remotely happy at the Irish contingent in the 2nd round to ease some of the pain of the Brits going out. 'Mon Sorensen.

Sheddie · administrator

Jamie's conqueror Ebelthite went on to make the semis, also taking out 4th seed Alun Jones (wr: 196) in straights along the way.

It's disappointing as it was a good chance for Jamie to go deep in a challenger and on paper it's a shocker but we have to consider the courts and the opponent's game before making too much of a judgement. It was always going to be a very tough one on astroturf. Ebelthite is a huge server, game ideally suited to the astroturf in Dublin. He'd also been competing in Ireland for 3 weeks, winning a 15K plus came through Dublin qualies. Although Jamie's ranked 250 or so places higher, that's kinda cancelled out by the courts....astroturf is one of the fastest surfaces on court plus the bounce is very low and the ball skids through. It's been raining a lot in Ireland too so that would have made the courts even faster and skiddier, it's like grass used to be....which would favour Ebelthite a lot more than Jamie whose game is based around baseline grinding

This result aside (and I dont think we should read too much into it), it's been a pretty good few weeks for Jamie....first ATP win and came soo close to making 3rd round of Queens and then he qualified for Nottingham and matched JMDP for a set. Now onto the US hard court swing, his fav surfae and hopefully some good runs in the next few weeks with little to defend.